Potential

My LS11 teacher said something earlier today that I'd like to share. He told us that we're here in Ateneo not by accident. Out of 14,000 applicants in my batch, only 1,900 were accepted - a small amount compared to the ones who didn't make it.

It actually made me think about certain things. I hear quite a lot of people complain that some subjects are difficult, some would say they're not smart, even some who would wonder how they managed to get this far. I have those same thoughts myself, sometimes. But then I realized that I'm one of those 1,900 people who got in. There must be something in me that I haven't seen before...

The truth is, all of us who got accepted are smart. There's no such thing as a stupid Atenean, or anyone for that matter. Why we have a hard time is not attributed to our potential but to our habits. We may be lazy, or too stressed out to study, or even uninterested on the subject, that we find it difficult. I've made my own formula for how well we do in any subject, and it's quite simple: 10% potential, 90% work. All of us have that 10% of potential, even more. The problem arises with the 90% that come from work. Everytime we say that we're not smart enough for accounting or statistics or calculus, we're just making excuses for the lack of that 90% and go blaming it on the lack of the 10% potential. We say that because it's easier to say we don't have it in us than admit that we just didn't do our best.

We may make mistakes, but that's a given already. What is important is that we learn from them and not give up. As Thomas Edison said, he didn't make 50,000 mistakes, he discovered 50,000 ways that wouldn't work.

Everyone has potential - some a bit more than others. But all that potential is wasted if we don't use it. As sir Tatot said during the LDP, we are here not only for ourselves, but also for those who aren't. And if we waste our time here, then we would also have wasted the chance to learn here - the chance those other 12,100 didn't get because of us.